China spying case highlights new election risks to foreign policy

Good morning. The biggest story in Westminster today – and not just today but for many months and perhaps years – is the arrest of three people on suspicion of spying for China, all former advisers to Labor in the 2010s.

This is a reminder of the biggest obstacle facing the government’s China policy.

Be prepared for more embarrassment

Keir Starmer is following the same China policy as Rishi Sunak, but Sunak faced two major obstacles while Starmer faced only one.

Sunak was held back by 1) a large and powerful faction of Conservative backbenchers who wanted an explicitly hostile policy toward the world’s second-largest economy, and 2) the hard truth that China engaged in espionage against us.

Starmer has a free hand as there is no significant anti-China group within the parliamentary Labor Party or within Labor as a whole. But he faces the same real-world hurdle that Sunak faced: China Both An indispensable country in the modern world And A country that spies against us.

I’m not going to debate the Starmer-eccentric China policy in too much detail today, because I’ve done it before, and Janan Ganesh did it more elegantly some time ago:

Friedrich Merz is expected to visit China soon, despite Germany having to establish a much smaller diplomatic base there than in Britain. (Olaf Scholz visited twice and bilateral trade is huge.) Mark Carney visited last month and Emmanuel Macron a month ago. Did Starmer really not have to go? Britain has real security concerns, but what threats does it face that other North Atlantic democracies have decided to manage? If the issue is moral – human rights and so on – then what has almost a decade of isolation from China achieved on that front? Will the Gulf’s autocratic monarchies be abandoned? With which democratic allies, if not across the Channel, should Britain seek numerical strength against autocratic regimes?

To all this I would like to add: the alternative to the Starmer-cynical approach on China is not just more aggressive than any of Britain’s real partners: it is more aggressive than the approach supported by Donald Trump’s US. America, with its immense size, advantage and military power, is still the world’s indispensable power. It is UK. . . No.

However, the arrest of three people in early 2010 on suspicion of spying for China, all of them Labor advisers, is likely to further shake this government. Given that senior figures in the Labor Party are highly interconnected, both personally and politically, allegations of espionage against key officials within the party would shock, upset and anger many, as well as cause considerable embarrassment and potential electoral harm.

The new geopolitical era we live in means British governments are having to get used to foreign policies that will embarrass them. These include an American policy that involves some degree of irreverence, whether it’s being rebuked by Donald Trump or going along with policies that most British voters strongly dislike. On China, this will mean stories like this, stories that will sooner or later claim the resignation of at least one minister.

Foreign policy has rarely been an area that wins votes in democracies, but it may increasingly become an area where votes and political careers are lost.

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Today’s top stories

• reliable tv | The BBC will urge ministers to commit to wide-ranging reforms, including ending political appointments to its board, as part of a plan to secure greater institutional independence in negotiations over its next royal charter.

• ‘Embodiment’ of labor values | Shabana Mahmood will cut asylum seekers’ rights to housing and support as she doubles down on tough immigration policies despite pressure from backbench Labor MPs.

• thanks a million thanks | Nigel Farage’s Reform UK received a second major donation from businessman Christopher Harborne, taking the party’s fundraising ahead of Labor and the Conservatives last year.

• Espionage charges | Two men, including a former Border Force officer, “took the law into their own hands” by joining a shadow policing operation in Britain on behalf of authorities in Hong Kong, a jury was told.